I thought it might be useful to bring together some of our initial ideas. So far there seems to be three main ideas coming up:

• Mixing (or duelling!) of forms (both different poetry forms and mixed media with illustration, film etc.)
• Mixing of languages (English and Spanish/Spanglish/French, and indigenous languages – yes, agreed, this is also a super interesting topic in Peru too!)
• Mixing of writers from a particular country and “visitors”, like L’Abri´s example of Gertrude Stein (and us all!!)

…Have I missed something?

I love all these ideas and I would be really excited if we could put something together using film or other mixed media.

Perhaps the unifying idea here is something to do with layers of insider vs outsider (outside mediums incorporated into poetry, indigenous / european / our own languages, the difference between writing about somewhere as an insider and as an outsider).

What do you guys think?

Thank you all for your enthusiasm for this project! I’m quite excited to bring three such brilliant people together and plan to mostly read your all your poetry in awe 😉

As you know, the idea is to bring together English-speaking poets who are living and writing in different countries. My original idea was for us each to respond to the poetry of the country where we are living, perhaps picking one poet in particular. But I’d also love to make this more collaborative between the four of us. So please let me know your thoughts and ideas for how we could do that, I’d love for this to develop in new directions.

As we all know Campus it seems as good a place to collaborate as any, let’s see how it works!

Love from Lima,

Alice

PS We are officially on the programme with this project for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival in 2017 (yes, I know, 2017!) They will pay a small fee but can’t afford to pay any plane tickets so in case it is possible for anyone to combine it with other travel, it is usually around May time. http://www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk/